The Surprising Difficulty of the Love of God

It's already Good Friday in Europe and regions east of there; it will be here soon. Yes, it really is good. It was the ultimate expression of God's love for us, freely offered to all who will accept. The love of God is free, unconditional, not based on our worth or merit before him. That is the great and marvelous news of Christ's work on the Cross for us: he made us acceptable in God's eyes through his sacrifice on our behalf. Thank God for that!

But the same truth has a harder side to it. It takes a cross for God's love to reach us.

God's love--free, unconditional, not based on merit--does not let us come before him with anything in our hands to offer; nothing but trust and worship. He doesn't love us for how good we are, he loves because of his own goodness. Now, if you're like many people (including me), you like to be respected, possibly admired, and certainly loved for what is good in you. You want your relationships on some kind of equal basis, some sense that you are giving back what you are receiving, and especially some confidence that you deserve the love you get.

But I'm one of the lucky few, I think; this is probably even harder for some others than it is for me. My parents loved me, my family loves me, and I experience a lot of freedom in that love. Many of you had to fight for every scrap of approval you got. That very well may have made you a better person than me; I don't subscribe to the view that the more dysfunctional your family, the worse you inevitably turn out. I've seen too many exceptions to that supposed rule. (Joseph, in Genesis, is a tremendous Biblical example.)

But to some extent we all try to be approved for what we're good at. God doesn't do look at us that way. He created us in his image, and he loves us out of his own goodness, his own choice. We can't make God love us any more than he does, no matter what we do. All we can do is accept his love--or we can reject it. I think many reject God because we can't come to him based on pride of accomplishment. Here is the surprising difficulty: His love is the supreme insult to our pride.

"Be clothed with humility, for
'God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble;
Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time."
I Peter 5:5b-6

In due time he will lift us up: if we come to him his way, that is, not ours.

I must refocus, though, on how good God's love is. After all, if we did have to deserve his love based on our goodness, we'd never stand a chance. Thank God for the sacrifice of Jesus Christ; thank God for his free gift. The supreme insult to our pride is also the supreme joy of a humble, accepting heart.

Posted: Thu - April 5, 2007 at 08:57 PM |

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The Surprising Difficulty of the Love of God

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson